Once a declining area of British Rail’s empire, environmental concerns and road
congestion have seen rail freight bounce back under privatisation. But it remains a small sector, whose traditional markets are in decline. Robert Wright looks at where its future lies
Freight Britain I
t is unusual for a group of railway executives, politicians and officials to break into spontaneous applause at the sight of a single train. But, when a Class 66 diesel hauling containers rattled noisily through Southampton Central station during a speech on 4 April by Theresa Villiers, the rail minister, the assembled dignitaries all turned round to clap.
A number of the containers were noticeably higher than the
others – at a level that would once have scraped low bridges and narrow tunnels. They were concrete – or steel – evidence that work to lift bridges and lower tunnel floors along the route had been completed, allowing such containers to travel on normal wagons. To anyone outside rail freight, it is a surprise how excited the sector’s executives are about the ‘gauge clearance’ work that has made it far
A GB Railfreight train carries coal to Drax power station in Yorkshire
easier to carry ‘high-cube’ containers on the UK rail network. On the same day that Villiers hailed the work to complete gauge clearance between Southampton – the UK’s second-busiest container port – and Nuneaton, work finished on a similar project linking Nuneaton and Felixstowe, the busiest container port. From Nuneaton, the trains have the run of the already cleared West Coast Main Line. The clearance work allows freight operators to dispense, on
those routes, with the expensive, hard-to-find, small-wheeled wagons that they previously used to carry high-cube containers. Since a disproportionately high proportion of high-cube containers have gone by road in the past, operators hope they can quickly win more high-cube containers over to the train. The question, however, is whether the sector’s prospects are best summed up by the optimistic
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